Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Today was busy. I was offered a teaching job, but it would require me to move to the Boston area. I don’t want to live there, so I won’t be taking the job. I wish all decisions were that easy. I’m doing a freelance contract while I rethink my original project. I failed on my first try, but I’m trying again. I have to think on it, and try to grasp the problem better before I try to solve it.

Most of what I do involves solving a problem by breaking it down into instructions so simple that even a computer can understand it. Mainly because I use a language the computer can interpret. There are a lot of details as well, but that’s the gist of it. I love computers, and part of me thinks it’s because they’re so black and white. I’ve spent more time with computers than any person.

Sometimes I worry that the internet is more of a distraction than it is a tool. A few of my computers don’t use the internet at all. This is deliberate. The best way to avoid getting information stolen, is to make it as inaccessible as possible. Hacking on the internet is still way too easy to allow sensitive material to maintain a connection. So many businesses are putting convenience ahead of security, and then want us to feel sorry for them when they get hacked. Sony comes to mind.

I feel contempt for companies that get hacked, not pity. I seriously think they should be held accountable legally for being vulnerable to cyber attacks while maintaining sensitive information about their customers. Target got off easy considering how epic their fuckup was. Just unbelievable. Ignorance is not an excuse when you commit a crime. Ignorance shouldn’t be an excuse for negligence in security in this day and age either.

If you put your customers sensitive information in a database that’s connected to the internet, and it gets hacked because you were too incompetent to use even a reasonable amount of preventative security, your CEO should be in jail next to the poor moron who got caught with weed. Only one of those crimes is harmful to the community. We need to punish the ones who are ultimately responsible. If one of those over compensated CEO’s was rotting in jail for ineptitude, the others would likely get a clue.

Right now, I’m leaning toward Bernie Sanders as the candidate I’ll vote for. Some of the things Hillary Clinton is focused on made my eyes glaze over. The war on drugs is a joke. Stop throwing money at it. Legalize, then tax the hell out of drugs, like the smart states are doing. Only take it further. If an adult chooses to buy heroin or some other drug that will probably kill them, let them do it. Let them be an adult and make choices, and then face the consequences.

Trying to stop them from doing it hasn’t worked. It hasn’t even made a dent in the “problem”. In the meantime, we have kids who want to learn who can’t afford to go to college. Or they’re desperate enough to take out huge loans and go anyway, only to have them come due before they find gainful employment. This is unnecessary. A tax on cocaine and marijuana could ensure a 4 year college degree for every kid in the country, including the outrageously priced textbooks.

The textbook industry for universities is running the same bullshit profiteering schemes as the government sanctioned drug industry. There’s something for the government declare war against. Okay. That’s enough ranting for now. I don’t want to get my blood pressure too high.